Along with updates to Lightroom Desktop and Mobile, Adobe has released an update of Lightroom Web. Lightroom web is available to Creative Cloud subscribers, at lightroom.adobe.com. If you don’t have a subscription to sign in with, you can visit this same page, click on Try on Web, and sign in with an Adobe ID. This will give you a 30 day free trial Creative Cloud subscription.
New in this update are:
- A new Welcome page, with access to your collections synced from Lightroom Desktop, news on what’s new, and more.
- Editing capabilities. In addition to rating and flagging photos, we can now do basic edits – cropping, applying some presets, Basic panel tone and presence edits, working on individual colors with the Color / B&W panel, and Dehaze from the Effects panel. These edits are least responsive using Safari, and most responsive using Google Chrome. Adobe is working on improving Safari performance.
- The ability to upload photos directly into Lightroom Web and the Creative Cloud. Imagine that you are away from home and have access to a computer and the internet, but not to the Lightroom software, or your catalog. Upload your memory card of photos (raw, JPEG, etc.) to Lightroom Web, work on them in your browser, and then your files and your edits will automatically appear back in Lightroom on your Desktop computer at home!
I really hope they add support to the web interface for metadata editing (IPTC etc)
I agree, Peter!
When you say the web edits will automatically appear in LR desktop, does that mean the raw file is downloaded from the web to my desktop, or do I still need to do a normal import and then synch?
Yes, the raw files download to your desktop. In Lightroom they show up in a Lightroom Web folder (they are embedded in a .lrdata file). Using the Folders panel, you need to then move them into a permanent folder.
Does this mean we have to manually upload the RAW into our primary desktop then link up the web folder to the permanent one in the desktop?
Hi Ahmad, if you are initially importing your raw file using a web browser (away from your desktop computer and the LR software), when you do get home and open LR on your desktop, LR will download it automatically, so there is nothing left to do, except possibly to use the Folders panel to move it to a different folder. If instead you initially import it into LR on your desktop: if you then sync it to Lightroom mobile, it will also appear automatically on Lightroom web.
I share photos in Lightroom Web folders with friends by giving them a link.
What will they see now? Can they edit my photos?
What they see won’t change, Robert. These shared galleries don’t have edit capabilities (or stars or flags, just Like and Comment).